"Monty Cantsin Rides Again": "Monty Cantsin" is a name invented by Mail Artist David Zack in 1978 intended to be a name that anyone can use to contribute to its myth of the Open Pop Star.  By becoming Monty Cantsin you become the Open Pop Star & what you do in his/her name becomes a part of the Open Pop Star legend.  "Monty Cantsin" is mainly associated with a cultural conspiracy called "Neoism".  Neoists have consciously avoided having the movement be neatly historicized & closed off after the usual convenient decade or 2.  As such, new Monty Cantsins pop up from time-to-time when such a collaborative identity becomes useful, where such an attachment to a particular rebellious current becomes life-infusing.  In 2015, I know of a new Monty Cantsin in Belarus, eg.  

This particular Monty Cantsin has been using the name since 2006.  By making this movie documenting his recent visit to Pittsburgh, where I live, I'm showing another link in Neoist history, another person flowing with the current.  Here we have a Neoist scholar preserving & reinventing the culture that's meaningful for him.  Neoism might very well be an open context in which culture is kept alive as something other than the homogenizing business-as-usual.  While massacres happen near & far, there ARE people who prefer nurturing to killing, gifting to selling.  

Monty Cantsin rides again because it's still useful for mythological creatures to take prosaic human form in everyday life without having to have millions of dollars to make special effects.  While Monty Cantsins come & go (after all, I've been Monty Cantsin too), there might be quite a few new ones to come & add some life to a resistance to a different type of homogenization that we don't necessarily enter into willingly.  

- December 20, 2015 notes from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE